Megabank Joins Coinbase’s Record $75 Million Funding Round

Coinbase has raised $75m as part of a Series C funding round backed by a host of impressive first-time bitcoin investors including the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Fortune 500 financial services group USAA, Spanish megabank BBVA and Japanese telcom giant DoCoMo.
The round, which smashes the previous record for a bitcoin company, was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) Growth Fund, of which noted bitcoin investor Tim Draper is a partner, and included long-time bitcoin-friendly investment groups Union Square Ventures, Ribbit Capital andAndreessen Horowitz. Former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit and former Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer contributed personal investments.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong sought to frame the funding as one that will help shift the mainstream perception of bitcoin during what has so far proven a rocky year for the industry.
Armstrong told CoinDesk:
‘I think this just really changes the conversation. There’s smart money out there that is betting big on this and is totally unphased by the whims of the price and what the market is doing. They’re much more concerned about the fundamentals of what’s happening in the network … and across those metrics, everything is looking great.’
He went on to explain that all the participants in the round are excited about innovations in the bitcoin space, and that they want to leverage their investment in Coinbase to learn more about what might lie ahead.
‘A lot of these companies they want to invest in category leaders,’ Armstrong continued, ‘and we made a convincing case that that was us.’
Coinbase intends to use its new capital to grow its employee base, while focusing on improving its mobile product as it eyes entry into developing markets.

This post was published at Coin Desk on January 20, 2015.